glowed."
Sage fluttered down to hover over Kitto's upturned face. "Goblin, your kind eats mine in times of war."
"The strong eat the weak. It is the way of the world," Kitto said.
"The goblin world," Sage said.
"It is all I know."
"You are far from that world now."
Kitto cuddled under the sheet so that only his eyes showed. "Merry is my world now."
"Do you like this new world, goblin?"
"I am warm, safe, and she bears my mark on her body. It is a good world."
Sage hovered for a few moments more, then flew back up to my waiting hand. "If the goblin gives his word of most solemn honor that nothing he sees, hears, feels, or senses in any way will he repeat to anyone, then he may stay."
Kitto repeated the promise word for word.
"Very well," Sage said. He gazed down my body; and though he was no taller than my forearm, I shivered and had the most uncomfortable desire to cover myself. A tiny red tongue like a drop of blood licked across his pale lips. "First the bloodletting, then the cure." The way he said cure made me half wish I hadn't agreed to all the guards leaving me alone. He was smaller than a Barbie doll, but in that instant, I was afraid of him.
Chapter 28
He fluttered down off my hand toward my breasts. I put my other arm between him and my body. He ended up on my other wrist, which I moved out from my body in order to see him more easily. I raised the sheet over my chest with my other hand.
He looked disgusted. "Will you deny me heart blood?"
"I saw what your kind did to my knight. I would be foolish to let you near such tender flesh before I see exactly how gently you feed."
He sat down on my wrist, ankles crossed, hands on either side to steady him. He seemed to weigh more sitting down; not much more, but it was noticeable.
"I would be ever so gentle, fair lady." His voice was the sound of chimes in a warm summer breeze. Had his lips been like a tiny crimson flower but a moment ago? He touched that flower-soft mouth to my hand, his body reclined along my arm as I would have reclined upon a couch. He ran his tiny mouth and hands over the minute hairs on my arm. Where a larger lover would have smoothed them with his mouth or fingertips, Sage played with them as if he was making music along my skin -- soundless music that only he could hear, but I could feel it. It played along my skin, my arm, as if it were all larger, more than was actually happening.
I flung him sharply into the air, where he buzzed at me like an angry bee. "Why did you do that? We were having so much fun."
"No glamour, remember," I said, scowling up at him, clutching my sheet.
"Without glamour the feeding will not be nearly so pleasant for you." He shrugged his thin shoulders, the movement making him dip in midair. "For me it is much the same, for Niceven's purposes it is much the same, but for you, fair princess, it is not the same. Let me save you some pain and discomfort, and let this be a friendly sharing."
If he'd caught me on another day when Kitto's bite didn't still ache, I might have told him no, just to take his queen's blood and be done with it. Goblins could not do glamour of any kind, so Kitto had had no choice; without the natural glamour of sex to soften his feeding, there was nothing he could do magically. Sage was offering me a choice.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then nodded. "Just enough glamour to make it pleasant, but that's all, Sage. If you try for more than that, I'll call for the guards and you won't like what they'll do to you."
He made a sound that would have been rude, except that it came out like a tiny trumpet, as if a butterfly could make an ass's bray. "Darkness has been waiting centuries for me to put a foot out of line, Princess. I know well, perhaps better than you, what he owes me."
"I noticed it seemed personal between you, more than with the others."
"Personal? You could say that." He smiled, and it managed to be pleasant and evil at the same time, as if he was imagining terrible things